So EQL 9 is about to end, just a few games left and before everyone leaves for summer vacation, what did you think of this season?
What was good, what was bad and what was just odd?

For me this season was very good, a lot of activity in the first weeks and then some again in the playoffs.
Having big divisions really seemed to get people playing again, but perhaps it was for another reason? Tell me if it was!

A big miss we did with this season was expect that most teams would only be semi-active like they usually do and because of that we had a 12 week long group stage. Now thinking back it would probably have been better with 6 weeks and then 2 weeks of play offs.
Perhaps the WOs didn't work out the best, as it was really unfortunate to see the only team that had stolen a map from tVS miss playoffs.

For me this season ended up a bit odd as I initially joined a div3 clan that then with some recruits turned div2 and I didn't play a single map.

So what are your thoughts?

the big divisions was the main advantage this season.
keep it.

regarding the playoffs, they sucked. why play vs the same teams again? it doesnt add any value. i dont understand.
the playoff should be special games. in my pov, should be as simple as:

the #1 team in div2 plays the best of the div1 relegated team
the #2 team in div2 plays the 2nd best of the div1 relegated team
the #3 team in div2 plays the team who placed last in div1

repeat for other divs
This way some value is added: in current form, inter-div teams play each other and compete for an actual place in the divison.

maybe some other idea, anything is better than the eql9 playoff system

edit: oh, i forgot the wo's. it sucked. By looking at the standings, i read that all teams played all games - which is very much misleading.

It was certainly an interesting season.

With regard to spectating, division 1 was the best it's been in a couple of years. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking it was a competition for second place, but between Slackers, CMF, Drz and (once again unfortunately controversy-ridden) 3B there were some very good games played in the group stages and playoffs, especially the SR DRz semi-final.

A suitably big deal was made of the final, and, even though it was a little bit of a walloping, it drew in a lot of specs and the commentating, especially by Purity, was top notch. tVS played brilliantly, and DRz showed hints that they could win, or at least take a map or two, if they were in better shape. Perhaps the lull in activity towards the end of the season dulled the skills of most of the clans.

With regard to the bread and butter of any league, the activity and the play, the start of the league couldn't have gone any better. We were seeing 60-80 prac and eql games every day from Sunday to Tuesday, and not much of a drop off over the other days, and that's great. But, the activity couldn't hold, and by the 60% mark, almost everyone who was going to play already had, so activity died and clans got bored. Maybe next season can run slightly shorter and just make the schedule allow for 1.5-2 games a week to avoid the dead period at the end. Let people play when they want to play, and then don't make them wait 2 months for the playoffs.

Also, I think reducing the number of playoff spots would make people more interested in playing the group stage and remove pointless delay of the finals along with the first round rape that we saw when the top 4 teams 3-0ed the bottom 4 teams in division 1 ... again.

The big division system was definitely a good thing; I credit it alone with the incredibly spike in activity we saw. People asking for "prac div2" suddenly had a much wider variety of clans answering the call through the semantic change if nothing else, and we saw some nice upsets in the group stages. Some of the teams at the bottom of the league had to suffer pretty heavily, but they would have suffered in smaller divisions too. The only difference is they would have had to lose fewer games.


On to a controversial subject. ;/
The map pool was something I personally didn't like, and a sizeable amount of others were upset about it too, but the so-called "kenya" lovers suffered through the conservative pool and watched the double-played maps in the playoffs with far less whine than you see from the ultra-conservative, extremely vocal players who'd sooner rape their own mothers than admit to liking any map not made by id software 13 (THIRTEEN WHAT THE FUCK HOW OLD AM I?) years ago.

At this stage CMT4 can hardly be considered an alien experience, with many leagues (and the nations cup!) featuring it heavily. CMT3 is a very solid teamplay map; its only apparent downfalls being a colour scheme that's not very appealing and that it is hard to play at first, which puts off a lot of people before they can give it a chance.

Hopefully we'll see the re-introduction of these maps in the next season, or maybe replace one with CMT1B. It has its own unique style ("dm3 clone" being a criticism of many other custom maps), and it plays very well from a team perspective. It has been used in leagues in the past, and I'm slightly puzzled at the speed which it disappeared completely considering its quality. Check out this game from two of the greatest teams in qw history to see how the pros play it.

All in all, this was a great league that could have been a little bit shorter and could have used a couple of extra maps. Nice job, EQL guys!

well this never works because players join and leave in too many teams, also teams are formed for 1 league and ppl in the team dont really see a future together beyond that league. when nqr tried relegations it mostly sucked cuz the clans in the bottom hade already stopped playing anyway and the games were never played...

1) the division size was almost perfect this time, nice! i can't see a relegation system work, it doesn't work in qwdl for the reason that you can't tell which teams are going to participate next season at all and with what lineup. i think the extra effort of creating suitable divisions will have to be done for every individual season.

2) season duration was too long. it needs to be shorter and more to the point.

3) i agree that kenya maps will have to be introduced if only for the reason to keep newer players interested and to give them a chance on maps that are not un-winable from the oldschool players. cmt is the worst solution for this because it's a weird hybrid of a oldschool map and a kenya map. it's an 'old kenya map' by now and it has never been really popular to begin with. i would advise to have the courage to introduce a brand new kenya map that is of really high quality and fun to play instead of a half hearted attempt at kenya like cmt.

beaten by Hto for point 1 :/

POs between divisions could work if it's done like this.
#1-4 in div1 played gold POs
#5-6 in div1 + #1-2 in div2 played silver POs
#3-6 in div2 played bronze POs
#7-8 in div2 + #1-2 in div3 played iron POs
#3-6 in div3 played mud POs

This would mean the idle teams in bottom of each div still wouldnt destroy the fun.

I still don't get this one. Why don't people make pro-kenya arguments using something that actually talks about the merit of those maps, instead of trying to bash core maps on the basis of them being too old.

Grass and earth is how old? And yet football players seem to have no problem with it. Even street ball is played on the same map over and over: a street. You don't start playing it with the goals side by side, because you are bored of them being opposite each other, do you?

edit: EQL9 was awesome

Yeah, I'm all for adding NEW map(s)
-But as I've said before, for both 1on1 and 4on4 - there is no point in re-adding old maps. If the kenya lovers wants something fresh, then bring us something fresh.

It can't be that hard to set up a project like Link did with CMT.
0. Make sure to base the project on new maps, and not old FFA maps (the failure of CMT).
1. Find a good mapper, gather some top 4on4 players.
2. Get ideas for building the "perfect" 4on4 map, do a layout, present it to the mapper.
3. Ask the players about item placement and layout changes.
4. Get two teams consisting of veteran 4on4 players to play some pracs on the map.
5. Make changes, from player feedback.
6. Repeat step 3 to 5 again and again, until the map plays perfectly.

And instead of doing 5 maps, do 1 - I think that even 2 maps are too much. If you want to succeed with adding more maps to the map pool, you need to slowly feed it to the players. NQR added 3 new maps - the same season!

Also, the map should look fresh, and not look like something thats already 10years old.
-Without a project like this, or someone coming up with a brand new high quality 4on4 map (out of nowhere). I wouldn't expect the map pool to change.

The global (all divs) 3 maps mappool kinda shocked me. If you take a look at nqr and eql history, this is something very rare and the reasoning wasn't explained too much - I read something like "too many whine" .. which is not exactly an explanation i'd like to see being used behind such an important decision.

I still think it's 3B's own fault they didn't reach playoffs but the arguing in the comments under news item that announced this was lame (both team members and eql crew participated) and could be prevented by some planning. (I already proposed a solution to this in some another dedicated thread.)

I liked that the EQL crew started an initiative to update gameplay rules - I mean the strafescript stuff, but I'm missing some summary on how well this was enforced. I think lots of players will be using 1.9.2 build as long as possible. It looks like an open issue to me.

i dont get why ppl are bashed just because they like to play tb3 over and over...

are these not valid arguments?

a) it is actually fun on those 3 maps
b) i dont need new maps to have fun

it is just a matter of taste, some ppl will like new maps and some ppl will not

i think nqr11 had a great idea to let clans play tb3 or tb3+cmt3-4 if both clans agreed and had put that as an option, that way noone was forced to play soemthing they didnt like

and about the playoffs. i think that 8 teams from each division should go to the playoffs, dont mix playoffs between divisions, we all know that those bottoms teams wont play anyway so that means that the lower divs will suffer and WOs will be had. also what is the problem with team1-4 winning 3-0 or 3-1 versus clans 5-8? i mean the clan in first place is there for a reason. besides it is always fun to reach playoffs and only allowing 4 teams will mean that the other clans will have like 0% chance to reach playoffs in division1 so what the hell will they be fighting for?


imo, keep tb3, keep large divisions and keep 8 teams for playoffs. all other ideas might sound good in theory but what the heck, this is qw, we have like 400 players and too few of them are dedicated enough to stay in the same team for more than 1-2 seasons so stuff with relegation games and all that _wont_ work.

Of course majority of players will not want to learn more maps, as they have problems with their own (team) skill getting better on tb3, learning 2 more requires even more dedication and could reveal how their teamplay actually sucks. Only the top teams have nothing to worry about, but top teams are by logic 5% of the community.

and whats the big point with revealing that a clans TP sux? making the games even more random and sucky to spectate? get it into your heads that most players dont spend hours each day learning new qw maps. ofc it would be fun to do that but as it is now i guess the fun part with qw is that you actually know the 3 maps that are being played and can play some nice teamplay on them. i wouldnt wanna have my 1-2 games per week totally ruined just because i dont know the map. dm3 is really boring but atleast i know what to do (alltho i fuckup all the time) and it is way more fun than any other map outside of the tb3

most of us play for fun and the most protests against new maps have come from the higher divisions anyway

The never ending discussion about custom maps :/
-Regarding EQL9, we simply had more request for a TB3 only tourney, than requests about TB3+CMT3/4.

I'm all for new maps, but I don't see why we should break what works, by forcing people to play maps they don't want to play.
-If CMT3/4 are gonna be in EQL again, it's probably only gonna be as an OPT-IN option.

As I stated in my previous post, it's not that I think CMT maps are bad maps, I just think that they have failed.
-They've been around for 5 years, and how many pracs do we see played on them?

If the kenya lovers out there want to see more maps in the mappool, I think they should step up and actually do something.
-If I as a league has to convince people to play other maps than TB3, I want to be able to present them with something that they haven't rejected numerous times before.

Find some quality maps, get em tested, make changes, run some small tourneys, convince the players who people admire, to play em. And then come back, with a request to get it added to the current map pool.

Aero/ztn wasn't accepted in 1on1 until people started playing them outside of tournaments.

Opt-in system is illogical, why would a team voluntarily put more load on their pracs and discriminitate itself against other teams? Of course there will be some teams who just dont care and will opt-in but those will be only few.
Will you ever be able to clearly distinguish between those who don't want cmt3/4 because they don't want to learn ANY new map and those who really do think those maps just are not good enough and some other should be used?

True, and so is forcing players to play maps they have already refused to play.

If it was the majority that wanted new maps, we would see em used already. You are probably right about it being difficult to distinguish between those who only want TB3, and those who just dislikes CMT3/4.

But ain't the question really who likes CMT3/4? I can't remember the last time I opened up QTV and saw a game going playing either of the two maps.
-Oh wait, I do remember, it was during QNC where it was forced into the mappool.

Find a map people will play volunteerly

well what other maps would that be? are any other 4on4 maps being played in pracs now or during the season we just completed?

the bottom line is that we havent seen a good enough map yet and perhaps we never will since almost noone will give it the amount of time it will need to get accepted

It's not just about giving it the time to be accepted, It's also about using the time to make something that can be accepted.

Don't bring us FFA maps, don't bring us maps made by mappers without gameplay knowledge, don't bring us maps only tested with 4on4 mix.
-Bring us something solid, put in the time and effort to actually present something WORTH accepting.

Noone have done that since Link, and with all respect to Link, I just think the priorities of the CMT project were wrong.
-Regarding giving CMT time for acceptance, it's been 5 years - I think it's time to pull the plug.

So lets focus on the topic CAN WE?
WHAT DID YOU GUYS THINK WAS GOOD OR BAD WITH EQL? KEEP THE CMT TALK IN ANOTHER THREAD!

I'm satisfied, felt like a smooth tourney.
two new BALANCED maps would be fun!

haha, peppe just couldnt stay off the map topic

Go make another thread, we took over this one! Btw, we are discussing what JohnNy_cz think was bad about EQL9.
-And for any league the map pool is always the big issue to discuss.

But if you really want feedback thats not about maps.

-What was good?
The division sizes
The rule changes, that made it easier to understand
The general good attitude towards playing the games (compared to some previous seasons)

-What was bad?
The season length
The lack of coverage
The lack of active admins

I like the idea.It is hard to be active when your clan is in the situation when there is no chance to achieve playoff spot and it doesen't matter at all are you in the last place or one of the last. Even if the rules would say the last 2 clans of the divisions will be moved down it wont happen after long break clan can be dead or with different lineup
or some of the players from other clans start to whine and your clan will be back in same division.I would keep division1 playoffs like it was this season.

Division 1 was fun to watch this season.Even if lack of some top clans and 3b out off the playoffs it was still a great seson for spectators.Division2 started ok but too many clans got some late additions what radically changed performance of the clans.I know admins wanted to keep clans active but it was unfair for the clans who wanted to stay with original lineup.Division3 started pretty strong but activity died in the end and maybe too many walkovers was given and some of the active clans didin't make for playoffs and many walkovers in the playoffs made it booring.Overall big divisions worked and it was much more fun than some of the previous seasons.

I liked the size of the divisions. Many teams went inactive after a intensive beginning of the season, but if I remember correctly, it happens every season regardless of pretty much anything.

"Opt-in system is illogical"

I think it's the most logical and most fair solution to everyone, unless you want to run two tournaments with different map pools. The majority of clans don't want to play maps besides TB3, and I don't see any reason why they should. The small part of community who wants the larger pool, gets it and plays against other similiar clans on kenya maps. I don't see a problem there

What are you talking about? I didn't say anything negative about the core maps (I love the core maps), and the next two paragraphs were full of praise for 3 custom maps.

I don't think the core maps need to be removed. I think the pool needs to be 5 maps because that's an inherently superior number, especially for playoffs, so I suggested some possibilities to be added.

[edit]Sorry for adding to the maps debate Zapp, but that quote misrepresented me and I felt it needed clarifying.[/edit]

I would like to change eta-betas activity, he wasn't active at all and when he finally played a game he totally sucked and made us lose Can we get a rule for this somehow? Like totally forbid suckiness in div1? That would definately rise the level of gameplay in div1 and make us all much more PRO tnx.

For next season I'd prefer top-4 playoffs so that every point won in groupgames is important, fixed sunday schedules like qnc to put a stop to the tactical refusals to play and fighting about who deserves wo and why, and a weekly round up of the most important events from the week for coverage (like qnc). TB3 is good. For me QW is fun because of the insane amount of skill and routine, that is nonexistent in other maps.

regards from Brazil,
blAze

Well, I've been running daily cmt games all summer (lots of 1b, which seems to an appreciated gesture). Instead of sitting and whining about a lack of routine on the other maps, I've been trying to create it in people, and I've had quite some success with it. I'm already seeing complex ambush patterns evolving to counter the rapidly improving quadrunning, and some interesting methods of taking back control of a map as a team. You'd be surprised how much people can improve in a short time if games are actually played on the map, and playing games is what people are supposed to enjoy about quakeworld, right?

Skill is defined as "an ability that has been acquired by training", so saying that people don't have skill on any map outside tb3 is only valid as long as people don't play on them, and my 1-month-old 160MB 4on4 screenshot folder is doing its best to shoot that argument down.

Lots of people in EQL play QW so rarely that they will never learn a new map properly. Just running on old fumes these days.

As to them being new maps, these cmt maps are 6 or 7 years old and have been used in past NQRs and EQLs in the case of 1b, 3 and 4. The vast majority of people have played them in leagues before, or at least have a passing familiarity of them, and that can easily be built upon.

Secondly, at the start of the EQL season there were 60-80 4on4 games going on PER DAY. The game is 13 years old and it was bigger before the summer break than it was 2 years ago. Yesterday, at the height of the summer lull, 412 different qw players played a game, and that's going off the ktx stats site which seems to miss games here and there lately.

It's people saying "qw is dead" and "no one plays anymore" that will eventually kill the game. If the game was so dead I wouldn't have managed to spend every day of the last 2 weeks NOT on wargamez playing only cmt maps to get people to learn them (I could really use a game of dm3 for a change at this stage ), and this is during the summer break where activity typically grinds to a halt.

People can either sit around and complain about no one playing, or they can play. They can reminisce about the good old days, or they can ensure that there will be some more. Come join the cmt1b game tomorrow. I'll probably be starting it at around 20:30 or 21:00 CET.

your 'old fumes' and 'insane skill levels' won't bring any new players in unfortunately.